Sara Coffin redefines the daily grind. A choreographer and dancer, her 9 to 5 is filled with movement, motivation and momentum. Sara teaches ballet, creative and modern dance at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby, where she is also a fine arts leader. Her love of movement is revealed not just by her passion for dance, but by her approach to what for many of us is just a necessary chore – the daily commute.

Sara cycles from the Commercial Drive area with four others in the Shadbolt Arts crew: Leslie Dyer, Salome Diaz, Jenni Higgins and Joel DeStafano, all of whom exude a dynamic passion and love for life and their work.

A Bike to Work Week success story, Sara started cycling to work in 2008, spurred on by a curiosity for how long the ride to Burnaby would take. Paired with inspiration from her cycling colleagues and cycling advocate neighbors, Sara leapt into cycling culture and left her public transit days behind her.

“Riding the bus or SkyTrain, you see the same scene day after day,” said Sara. “On a bike you have more control of your surroundings… You can take the road less traveled and experience the city in a new way. Every time I jump on my bike I feel like I’m in a new city.”

The bike path is the boardroom for the Shadbolt crew, as they use their commute along the Central Valley Greenway for brainstorming. “In fact,” said Sara, “sometimes we find ourselves so involved in the discussion we should start adding the commute to our timesheets.” The Greenway, with its legions of infamous “Burnaby crows” and winding forest-lined paths, is about as far from a typical office meeting as one could hope to get.

Cycling is a natural extension of Sara’s life and work; she easily equates dancing and the body to cycling in the city. “Negotiating the city is like complex choreography,” she said. “Propel forward, pull back, accelerate, decelerate, deke and dodge, banking turns, change in direction, riding over, under and around, stop, go, push, glide.”

Sara’s lifestyle embodies the continual swirl of motion that is a city; weaving through the steel wheels of urban life and moving her body through time and space. “Dancers are never stationary,” she explained. “There is always a sense of motion and mobility, while working, training, teaching and thinking in transit.” You can follow Sara Coffin through her dance collective, SINS Dance, at www.sinsdance.com